I collapsed onto the sofa, shaking uncontrollably, too shocked to cry real tears.
I sensed D hovering in the room and without saying a word to me, I felt him leave.
By lunchtime, my breasts had begun to harden with the milk that was now redundant. By dinnertime, they were beginning to feel engorged. D had tried to speak to me a few times, but I couldn’t hear him; his mouth was moving, but I could hear nothing.
At bedtime, as I finally let my weary body rest, I heard D’s words come to me through my half-slumber.
‘This is for the best. It won’t be forever – you can still see him. I will bring him to visit you. If you love our son like you say you do, you will do this little job for me. And all will be well.’
Then he touched me, ever so lightly, on the arm before he left the room. It was the first time in a long time I could remember him doing anything so gentle, and I wondered for a split second if this had affected him too, if he felt pain at our child, who wasn’t even a year old, leaving us both today.
I touched my stomach where my baby had grown as I clung on to the one blanket I had left of his. I thought of the first baby, the one who had only been able to cling on for a few months, and how D hadn’t shown any remorse when I lost it. Now my second child was gone as well, and D was responsible. Where he had rested his arm for a second, I felt my skin burning because I knew now that the man was poison. And so my body began to fill up with feelings of regret, rage and devastation. They all became muddled into one hardened mass of contempt.
I had failed my son and I had lost him.
36
Now
I woke at the bottom of the stairs. The light from the hallway was cascading down the steps, illuminating my crumpled body like a spotlight in a theatre. My whole body ached. There was a searing pain through my arm and my ribs. I heaved myself to standing and found that I could just about manage it; my backpack had cushioned some of the fall. I wondered if my phone had been damaged. I needed to speak with someone immediately and explain to them what I had discovered up there in the hallway and how none of it made any sense. I also needed to confirm it for myself. I must have been mistaken. I must have imagined it. Perhaps it was pure coincidence. I pulled out my phone and turned it back on. After a few seconds the apps came to life, ignoring all missed calls and text messages I headed straight into Instagram because that was where I needed to check first. Amazingly, I had missed a couple of posts from Mrs Clean, even though it had only been a few hours since I last checked. My eyes scanned the penultimate post; she was writing with a heavy heart and people were commenting, checking if she was okay. But wait, what was this comment from lucybest65?
The end is nigh.
It was a lot of information for me to take in, and none of it really made any sense yet, but the one thing I did know was that I had been duped. Everything that I thought I knew wasn’t true. And the only way I could fit all the jigsaw pieces together was if I went back up the stairs and confronted it head on.
I noted there were three more missed calls from the same number I had been avoiding. I also acknowledged there were voicemails. This was new. He had never left a voicemail before. I knew I had been running away for too long now, and so maybe now it was time I stopped.
Instagram post: 21st May 2019
Hi, guys, sorry about my last post. I was having a contemplative moment. We all have them, don’t we? I’m only human like you, after all. I wanted to thank you all for your lovely, kind messages. They mean the world. It’s just so nice to know that you all have my back no matter what. I feel a hundred times better after reading your kind words. I read every single one of them as well.
